Victoria’s Secret employee denies mom the right to breastfeed

An Austin mom had just spent $150 at Victoria’s Secret when she asked a sales associate if she could breast feed her baby in a dressing room. Ashley Clawson, 27, figured she could easily slip into a room where she’d have a quiet place to sit and nurse her fussing 4-month-old son at the store in Austin’s Domain mall. But when Clawson suggested her idea to a sales associate, she was denied and told to go to an outside alley.

Clawson was surprised by the Victoria’s Secret employee’s response. She politely asked a second time to make sure she understood her correctly. The woman behind the counter again directed her outside and told her that if she walked to the end of the long alley nobody would see her nursing.

“I don’t even know what alley she was talking about. I didn’t explore it because of my son. Obviously if you’ve been around a baby… once they start crying there is no going back,” Clawson, a stay-at-home mom who’s starting a photography business, told Fox News. “I was humiliated by the whole thing.”

Clawson’s son became fussier and the mother found a public restroom where she sat on a toilet to nurse.

Clawson shared the frustrating experience on Facebook and soon she was hearing from women all over the country who were outraged by the incident.

“Some of these people I’ve been getting friend requests from I have no clue who they are and people who have shared it on their page, their friends have shared it, and they’ve tagged certain groups that I never even knew existed,” Clawson said.

Texas law states that a mother is allowed to breastfeed anywhere. Clawson wasn’t aware of this law at the time of the incident but now she’s fully knowledgeable aoubt her rights and she filed a complaint with Victoria’s Secret. The retailer promised her a $150 gift certificate and issued the following statement:

We take this issue very seriously. We have a longstanding policy permitting mothers to nurse their children in our stores and we are sorry that it was not followed in this case. We have apologized to Ms. Clawson, and we are taking actions to ensure all associates understand our policy that welcomes mothers to breastfeed in our stores.

Clawson is one of many women who has shared her breastfeeding woes with the media. Last year a woman was told to cover up while nursing her baby at a Parks and Recreation center in Fort Worth, Texas. The mother’s husband caught the incident on video and the clip quickly went viral.

“This is normal — this is what breasts are for,” Lucy Eades told WFAA-TV. “And I told her that there are more kids in this lobby right now showing more cleavage and skin than I am nursing. Had she not made a scene, no one would have known, it was that discreet.”

Two years ago a Georgia woman was told by a pastor to cover up while breastfeeding in church. When Nirvana Jennette protested the pastor asked her to feed her baby in the bathroom. “Do they realize the germs that are in there?,” she told WSAV-TV. “If I say, ‘here is a sandwich, go on into the bathroom to eat,’ that person would be like eww, no! But it’s okay to treat a mother and baby like that? That’s sad.”

Clawson’s incident has caught the attention of the media attention because it occurred at Victoria’s Secret, a place where breasts are celebrated.

“It may come as a bit of a shock to learn that the Boob Empire itself doesn’t always support the breasts,” Shelley Seale wrote for Austin Culture Map.

“Breasts have been so oversexualized in our society that it’s completely acceptable to have huge billboards of half-naked women wearing Victoria’s Secret push-up bras and thongs, yet I need to go hide down alley in order to breastfeed my son,” Clawson told Culture Map. “Oh, the irony!”